


Terminus

by Scarlet



Category: The Good Wife (TV)
Genre: Alzheimer's Disease, F/F, TGW Fandom Fest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-26 06:09:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6226939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scarlet/pseuds/Scarlet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Decades have gone by when Alicia and Kalinda meet again. Some things have changed, some things haven't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Terminus

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Challenge #3 of [The Good Wife Fandom Fest](http://tgwfandomfest.tumblr.com/): "favorite ship".

Some days are better than others. Today is a better day. She can follow a thought from its beginning to its end and her children’s and grandchildren’s faces on the pictures crowding her bedside table look familiar. They don’t always. Their appearances shift occasionally and she can’t be sure how old they all are. Her mind gobbles things -- she blinks and suddenly time has passed. She blinks on Monday and then it’s Tuesday, or Wednesday.

Alicia looks down at her hands folded over the cream blanket covering her lap. When did she get hands like that? “Cemetery flowers” Jackie once told her the French called those coffee-spatter marks -- which she always found more darkly poetic than “liver spots”. She wonders what Jackie is up to, then she remembers. Jackie’s been gone for years. Yeah… she’s pretty sure it’s years.

“Mom?” someone says behind her chair. Alicia turns her head, does not recognize the voice. A woman appears in her field of vision. A stranger with sad eyes in an exquisitely cut gray pinstriped business suit. Alicia used to own suits like this one. She knows this. The woman pulls up a chair, reaches out for her unfamiliar hand. Too many people with sad eyes around her these days. “Who are you?” she hears herself say, then blinks.

“... and she asked me if she could come and see you and I thought you’d like that.”

Alicia smiles, brings a hand up to cup her daughter's cheek. “Grace,” she says fondly, “when did you get here, honey?”

Grace kisses her hand. “It doesn’t matter. Did you hear what I just said, mom?”

Alicia shakes her head. Her thoughts are slippery. She takes a deep breath, willing the world to solidify around her. It works sometimes. Only sometimes.

“Someone is here to see you,” Grace says.

“Hi Alicia,” another voice says to her left.

She has forgotten many things, but she has not forgotten that unplaceable accent with its seductive lilt. She jerks her head up to stare at the woman in a black trench coat and high leather boots who has materialized beside her. Her dark hair is streaked with gray and a pair of wide sunglasses dangle from her slim fingers.

“Kalinda!”

Alicia springs to her feet to hug her, the blanket pooling at her feet. There is an initial resistance, surprise at her sudden display of affection, but then Kalinda hugs her back, her arms as strong as she remembers them (she doesn’t know how she knows this, can’t recall Kalinda ever hugging her, maybe she’s confusing her with someone else).

She pulls back to look at her friend. They were friends once. Best friends. She remembers this. Kalinda’s face is remarkably unlined, save for crow’s feet at the corner of her eyes. “You haven’t changed,” Alicia tells her.

Kalinda squeezes her hand. “You haven’t much either.”

Alicia chuckles. “My hair certainly has,” she says, running dismissive fingers through her silver strands.

Kalinda smiles. “It suits you.”

“I’ll leave you two to catch up,” Grace says, planting a quick kiss on Alicia’s cheek.

“You remember Grace?” she asks Kalinda.

“I do.” Kalinda tucks her sunglasses inside her coat. “She looks more and more like you,” she says, giving Grace the once-over. Grace rolls her eyes, but a flattered smile tugs at her lips nevertheless.

“She’s a judge now,” she tells Kalinda proudly.

“So I’ve heard,” Kalinda says.

“And I’ve got to get back to work. The Stanton Sweeney case, you know,” Grace tells Kalinda.

“Stanton Sweeney? As in Colin Sweeney’s son?” Alicia asks her daughter.

“Yes, mom. I’ve told you. Several times.”

Alicia sighs. “I don’t remember.” So many things she can’t remember.

Grace pats her shoulder. “It’s okay.” She holds Kalinda’s gaze. “It’s good that you’re here.”

Kalinda nods.

Grace’s eyes slide back to Alicia. “Zach said he’ll drop by tonight. Sarah and I will come round Friday. I wrote it down on your pad. I love you.”

“Kick ass in court,” she tells her daughter.

Grace laughs. “I’ll try.”

“She’s a good kid,” Kalinda says once the door has closed behind Grace.

“She always has been.” Alicia gestures towards the brown leather couch behind them. “Come, sit.” She doesn’t use the couch much. She prefers her chair by the window, where she can see the flowers of the well-kept garden outside and the green rolling hills beyond it.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” she tells Kalinda once they’re seated. “How many years has it been?”

“Too many…” Kalinda holds her gaze. “I should have come earlier.”

“You mean, before I started losing my damn mind?”

“You’re lucid now. Now is what matters,” Kalinda says firmly.

“That’s because today is a good day. And I have fewer and fewer of those.” She pats Kalinda’s hand. “Don’t freak out if I suddenly stop making sense.”

Kalinda lifts an eyebrow. “Have you ever known me to freak out?”

Alicia smiles. “Once.”

Kalinda shoots her a teasing look. “Your mind really is playing tricks on you.”

Alicia gives Kalinda’s arm a playful tap. “Oh, I don’t think so. I remember it quite clearly. It was the day I was offered the junior associate position. You’d stolen my keys.”

“I didn’t steal them, you gave them to me.” Kalinda grins, pointing her finger at Alicia for emphasis.

“Whatever. We were at that bar… what was it called again?”

“Brando’s.”

“Right. We were drinking tequilas at Brando’s and I asked you if you were gay.”

Kalinda nods. “And I replied I was private. This does not constitute ‘freaking out.’”

Alicia laughs. “Oh, it does. I remember the look in your eyes perfectly. Granted you hid it well, but...” and this time she’s the one pointing her finger at Kalinda, “ … deer. Headlights.”

Kalinda scoffs. “Nonsense.”

“I thought you were attracted to me, back then. That’s why I asked.”

Kalinda’s gaze skids to a point over her shoulder.

“But you knew that, didn’t you?” Alicia smiles softly.

Kalinda side-eyes her. “I don’t remember you being this blunt,” she says in a low voice.

“I no longer have the luxury to beat around the bush, dear.” She stretches her arm over the back of the couch. “When you’re never sure if you’re gonna be able to finish a thought, or a sentence, it makes you re-evaluate your way of communicating.”

Kalinda nods, rubs the bridge of her nose. “When did it start?”

“My… condition? Three years ago.” She picks off a speck of lint from her grey skirt. “Small things at first. Dates and appointments I forgot, things I could no longer find in the house. And then one day, I got lost driving to Zach’s house. That’s when I realized something was really wrong.”

Kalinda stands up to take off her coat. She is still lithe, still has that same hourglass figure that gave whiplash to the Lockhart/Gardner staff whenever she walked down the firm’s hallways.

“Did your children put you in here?” Kalinda asks, sitting back down, and there is an edge of something in her voice -- not quite anger, but a definite irritation.

“No, I checked myself in,” Alicia hurries to reply. She doesn’t tell Kalinda that she nearly set fire to her kitchen, while trying to burn a stack of old case files she’d suddenly feared were going to be used against her. She didn’t remember doing it, but Grace and her wife had been in the living room where they’d been watching reruns of _Darkness at Noon_ when the smoke alarm went off. “This place has links with the best research centers in the country. My doctor has a background in neuroscience, actually.”

Kalinda taps her fingers on her knee and Alicia notes that her black skirt is longer than it used to be. “Would you let me take a look at your medical file?”

Alicia grins, “Once an investigator…”

“There is cutting-edge stem cell research, studies about the responses of neurons in the posterior parietal cortex…”

“Kalinda…” Alicia shakes her head. “I am the way I am. I was angry at first, but then I learnt to accept it.”

Kalinda purses her lips. “But you could be better, have more ‘good days’. Alicia… if I can help you, let me,” she tells her earnestly.

Alicia stares at her for a long time, sighs. “Tell you what, why don’t you talk with Zach. He’s been doing quite a lot of research on the subject as well. Maybe you can compare notes.”

Kalinda nods. “I will.”

Alicia smiles softly, catches her hand, strokes the back of it with her thumb . “You always had my back.”

Kalinda looks down. “Not for the past twenty years.”

Alicia shrugs. “Life took us on different paths. Where have you been anyway?”

“Europe, mostly.”

“Europe…” She loses track of what happens next. The next thing she sees is Kalinda talking on her phone by the window. Kalinda? Here? What... ? She searches her mind and the memories of what went on earlier that day surface back gradually, like bubbles on a quiet pond. _Thank you brain._

“Kalinda?”

“I don’t care about the view… yes, that’s fine… around 8pm… thanks.” Kalinda says before hanging up. She joins Alicia back on the couch.

“How long was I… gone?” Alicia asks.

“Not long. Twenty minutes or so.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing much.”

Alicia narrows her eyes. “Kalinda…”

Her friend shoots her a measured look. “Fine. You wanted me to leave.”

“Did I? Why?”

Kalinda chews on her bottom lip, hesitates, but must realize how important this kind of honesty is to Alicia. Her children don’t tell her everything and she needs so badly to have someone in her life who doesn’t mollycoddle her. “I think you were reliving that time you found out I’d slept with your husband.”

“Oh.” Alicia runs a hand over her face. “Was I mean to you?”

Kalinda pats her hand reassuringly. “It doesn’t matter. You’re back now.”

Alicia dips her head. “I’m sorry.”

Kalinda shifts in her seat, takes hold of her shoulders. “Never apologize for what you can’t help, you hear me?”

Alicia is touched by her kindness. “We’ve wasted so much time, you and I,” she sighs.

Kalinda runs her hands up and down Alicia’s arms, “I know. But I’m here now. And I’m not going anywhere.”

Alicia smiles. “I could kiss you right now.”

Kalinda's lips curve up at the corners, “What’s stopping you?” she says softly, and Alicia remembers all of her looks underneath those long lashes, all the stolen glances that weren’t meant to be caught, all of Kalinda’s laughs and too-rare brushes of her cautious fingers on her wrist or shoulder when they worked or drank together. She remembers the day Kalinda gave her new address, when Alicia had spotted something, something in those dark, burning eyes, that was more than mere friendship.

“Nothing.” Alicia leans forward and Kalinda begins to turn her head to offer her cheek, but Alicia catches her chin between thumb and index and moves to kiss her lips instead. It’s a slow, sweet kiss, undemanding, an acknowledgement. When Alicia pulls back, Kalinda’s smile is like the sun.

There are echoes of an old conversation swirling in Alicia’s head. Words once said that seem so fitting now. “Life changes, doesn’t it?” Alicia murmurs, tracing the curve of Kalinda’s jaw with her fingers.

“We can change it back,” Kalinda replies, her eyes bright, remembering too.

Alicia opens her arms and Kalinda comes willingly, her body melting against hers.

“We can do what we want,” Alicia whispers in her hair.

**Author's Note:**

> THANKS: to [orangesandlemons](http://archiveofourown.org/users/orangesandlemons/) for ace, speed racer beta, whose lovely comments are always such a treat to read. 
> 
> This story came completely from left field. I wanted to write a sweet Kalicia story and this... just happened.


End file.
